Busy Amy Berg’s Janis Joplin Doc to Be Shopped at Cannes

Busy Amy Berg's Janis Joplin Doc to Be Shopped at Cannes

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg has a lot going on these days. Not only did her first narrative feature, “Every Secret Thing” (with a screenplay by Nicole Holofcener), just premiere at Tribeca (where it was, unfortunately, panned by critic John Anderson for Indiewire), she also has a documentary in the works tracking sex abuse within the film industry, notably focusing on the still unraveling Bryan Singer case.

And now she has a new doc on Janis Joplin on her slate, being produced by another highly prolific documentarian, Alex Gibney, going to the Cannes market. “Janis: Little Girl Blue” is currently in production, and will reportedly “strip away Joplin’s rock n’ roll persona,” and includes her performances at Monterey Pop in 1967, Woodstock in 1969 and Festival Express in 1970, the same year she died at age 27 of a heroin overdose.

Meanwhile, Lee Daniels has been circling a Janis Joplin feature for a while — he announced last August that it would be his follow-up to “The Butler.” And Amy Adams has been attached as the lead in “Janis Joplin: Get It While You Can” since the director first stated his intentions to make the film back in 2012. At one point “Martha Marcy May Marlene” director Sean Durkin was also eyeing a Joplin film, “Janis,” with Broadway star Nina Arianda set to headline, but that hasn’t panned out.

“Janis: Little Girl Blue” will have its stateside premiere on PBS’ American Masters.